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| Rethinking Value |
After more than a year of discouraging economic news, the services industry appears poised for a rebound. For most of last year, the stocks of major service businesses rallied, and analysts now predict growing client demand for services. CEOs anticipate more hiring for 2010 than in 2009, and there's evidence of economic growth in many world economies.
Granted, the progression of any "recovery" will be uneven, impacting demand in some industries at different times than others. For some firm leaders and individual practitioners, though, good news can't get here soon enough.
No matter how your practice fared in the past, this is a good time to position yourself to take advantage of an uptick in your market.
You can begin by looking at how you're framing the issues your clients now face. Are you emphasizing solutions that reflect your clients' current priorities? If you're a change management consultant, for example, is your main message still the same old challenges of change? If you focus on succession planning, are you still stuck on the generic importance of planning for executive turnover?
I'm not suggesting that you abandon these messages entirely. But shift your focus to address the new challenges your clients must meet as they navigate their own recoveries. Once their priorities match your service offer, you have an opportunity to demonstrate value and win work.
If you try to market and sell using the same old tactics, expect to sit on the sidelines.
How are you responding to the changes in your market? Click over to our blog and share your ideas on this subject.
Enjoy this month's issue.
Mike McLaughlin
Editor
Join the Conversation:
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| Beating Feast or Famine Blog Round Up |
 You've probably heard the phrase "feast or famine"--a cycle professional services providers would like to avoid.
No doubt, you'd prefer clients to be lined up and waiting for your help. The reality is, though, that most services providers experience both extremes: streaks of challenging, profitable work, followed by stretches of the doldrums, with no new work in sight.
The Beating Feast or Famine blog's purpose is to offer ideas that can help you eliminate the ups and downs of "feast or famine" from your professional life, fulfill your career ambitions, and maintain your sanity.
Here are some samples with links to blog posts in January. You can easily subscribe to the blog's RSS feed using the subscribe button located at the top right corner of any blog page.
Why Best Practices Are Losers - Spend any time with a service provider, and it won't be long before you hear how the use of so-called "best practices" will pave the way to client success. The problem with best practices? They usually don't work.
15 Principles for Marketing Any Professional Service - Successful marketing is no accident. It takes insightful analysis, dedication to building a business and, most of all, patience. Every company approaches the market in a unique way, but the most effective marketers follow fifteen principles that lead to their success.
The World's Shortest eBook: 34 Sources of Client Value - To sell your services, you need to demonstrate the value of what you're proposing. But it can be tough to quantify the potential value of a service--and even tougher to get clients to agree with your estimate. Here's some help with that.
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| MCNews 12 Index of Professional Services |
For the eight months ending in December 2009, the MCNews 12 Index rallied to levels not seen since August 2008. In an impressive run, the Index returned more than 46 percent for 2009. In January 2010, however, that rally ran out of steam.
The mixed economic news suggests a reason for the slump. In the US, executives are hopeful for a turnaround, but more than a third of them still plan to make targeted headcount reductions in 2010, according to a survey by Towers Watson. They plan these actions in spite of some good news about GDP growth in the US and in other countries around the world.
January's dip doesn't necessarily portend darker days for the stocks in the MCNews 12 Index. Wipro, India's third largest IT services provider, for example, reported substantially higher quarterly earnings than expected. And analysts are encouraged by reports that many clients are jumping back into long-delayed projects.
Besides signs of growing client confidence, many consulting executives are plopping down money to build their practices. Korn/Ferry International bought Sensa Solutions, a management consulting firm that serves the US government.
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MCNews 12 Index |
YTD
Change |
| January 2010 |
910 |
-8.0% |
| December 2009 |
990 |
+46.1% |
| November 2009 |
932 |
+37.5% |
Navigant Consulting also went on a buying spree. The firm announced that it acquired Empiris, LLC, a Washington, D.C. economics consulting firm, and Summit Blue Consulting, a leading energy industry consulting firm.
Overall, the market for services is looking up.
In the continuing saga of Anil Kumar, the former McKinsey & Company Director pleaded guilty to securities fraud charges in Federal Court. Kumar admitted that he provided insider information to Raj Rajaratnam, the founder of the now-defunct hedge fund, Galleon Group.
Kumar, 51, started tipping off Rajaratnam about McKinsey & Company clients in 2004. In exchange for his information, prosecutors said Kumar was paid as much as $2 million. When he is sentenced on March 26, Kumar faces up to twenty years in prison, and reportedly agreed to forfeit $2.6 million as part of the deal.
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| Interview: Patrick Lencioni |
"Clients benefit from naked service because they hear what they need to hear, without having to parse through what you are saying."
This month, we welcome back Patrick Lencioni, best-selling author of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Death by Meeting, and The Three Signs of a Miserable Job.
In his new book, Getting Naked: A Business Fable about Shedding the Three Fears That Sabotage Client Loyalty, Lencioni tackles an issue that all consultants face: how to retain the clients you really want. We asked Lencioni about the strategies he uses to build trust and keep clients loyal.
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| What Christopher Columbus Can Teach Consultants |
Michael J. Gelb is an authority on the application of genius thinking to personal and organizational development. He focuses on the fields of creative thinking, accelerated learning, and innovative leadership. Here's an excerpt from my interview with Gelb.
McLaughlin: What are the key principles a consultant can glean from the life of one of the people you studied, Christopher Columbus?
Gelb: First of all, Columbus can teach anybody the importance of absolute persistence, ingenuity, and client focus in getting a project approved. He spent nine years getting his project approved and funded. In those years, he learned to speak, not just the languages of all the courts of Europe, but the dialects of the upper classes. He himself came from a common background--his father was a weaver. So, he was self-educated.
He learned to speak the upper class dialects because he had to win over the counselors to the kings and queens of Europe who would ultimately make his case for him. So, to bond with them and be heard, he had to come across as a peer. It's just a phenomenal story of a winning presentation, of getting comfortable in the 'client' environment.
People criticize Columbus because he didn't discover India. But, he shows us the importance of a bias to action. He didn't just go sailing out into the middle of nowhere. He did a lot of research: he studied geography and cartography; he was a master navigator, and captain; he was highly experienced, had navigated many challenging waters before, and was a tremendous student of the winds, which he knew he had to figure out in order to get home.
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| Boosting the ROI of Survey Research |
Industry surveys are a staple in the marketing programs of most consultants, but they are time-consuming to design and execute. The consultants at the Alterra Group, who focus exclusively on the unique needs of professional services marketers, offer some interesting insights on getting the most mileage from survey research.
To guide your thinking on how to make survey research pay off, the firm just published a short piece, Ten Ways to Boost the ROI of your Survey Research. My attention was drawn to their advice about hypotheses and stories, which are two elements many consultants struggle with. The authors warn against making your survey's hypotheses so broad that you can't cover the topic, or so narrow that it's hard to uncover interesting findings.
They also urge us to look for the story in the research, instead of just focusing on the data. Devising a compelling narrative for your survey findings may take longer than simply regurgitating facts. But a story will open doors more quickly and your audience will be more receptive.
For a great refresher on maximizing the value of your survey research, follow this link to have a look at the rest of the article.
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| 2010 CEO Outlook |
 At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last week, PwC released its 2010 Annual Global CEO Survey report.
Generally, things look a lot better this year than in 2009. In the survey of 1,200 chief executives in 52 countries, 81 percent are confident about revenue prospects for the next twelve months, up from 64 percent a year ago. And 31 percent are "very confident," up 10 percentage points from last year's low.
The jobs picture remains murky. Even though almost 40 percent of the respondents plan to increase headcount in 2010, 25 percent plan more job cuts. But this is down from nearly half who axed jobs last year.
In spite of their general optimism, CEOs see a "multi-speed" recovery, which is jargon for differing economic growth rates in different parts of the world. CEOs expect stronger growth in developing nations, where labor costs are lower, than in the developed ones.
Overall, the picture is one of guarded optimism. The global market is still awash in government-supplied capital to spur investment and lending, and to improve liquidity. What remains is for executives to redouble their investments in innovation, focus on growth, not cost control, and to be willing to take risks once again.
Read the 13th Annual Global CEO Survey.
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| Coming
Attractions |
"Although it's fashionable for folks in the C-suite to proclaim their commitment to 'corporate responsibility,' such talk often rings hollow."
Next month, we'll talk with Jeffrey Hollender, cofounder and chairman of Seventh Generation, the fastest growing brand of natural home and personal-care products. In his new book, The Responsibility Revolution: How the Next Generation of Businesses Will Win, Hollender outlines his prescription for the businesses of tomorrow.
We'll ask Hollender about the opportunities and obstacles executives face in embracing a new model for leading a 21st century business.
Look for the next issue of Management Consulting News on March 2, 2010.
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